Blaming The Wrong People

Recent scenes on social media of disarray and near stampedes in airports across the country have dominated national news. The top management of the country’s largest airline has been rightly castigated. Of course, there are questions on the role of the regulatory body too, who were no less guilty of rigor mortis when it came to overseeing the implementation of their own guidelines. The long rope given to the dominant private player has twisted itself into a noose for the unsuspecting public.

One aspect of this drama which caught my attention was the furious reaction of the public and the venting of their ire on the hapless and young frontline ground staff of the airline. Cancelled and delayed flights in the face of pressing deadlines and family emergencies can unnerve and unhinge the calmest amongst us. The escalation of ticket costs, delayed refunds, and general dismissive attitude of the two sector leaders controlling 90% of the market adds insult to the frustration of the grounded flyers. It’s like putting money in the bank and suddenly receiving a debit message instead. But we don’t go to the bank and beat up the cashier for that.

I have experienced missed flights abroad in international airports for different reasons. Nobody rushes to the counter, shouts at the staff, or demands instant remedies. There are shrugged shoulders, wry smiles, and a bit of murmuring, but everyone queues up as requested by the airline staff and considers the options offered. There are no ticket-waving hordes baying for blood. And nobody blames or shouts at the staff.

Contrast this with the general chaos that takes place at Indian airports when a flight is cancelled or unduly delayed. All hell breaks loose, and the passengers, filmed by an indulgent media, suddenly turn into a mob. The reasons for the delay could be technical, bad weather, or pilots playing truant—no airline worth its salt would disrupt its own schedule without a pressing reason. But we assume the worst, and unfortunately, the collateral damage of this mayhem are the young men and women who manage the frontlines—the check-in counters and the boarding gates.

Surely, there appears to be little sense or logic in bullying relatively harmless junior employees who are not responsible for the disrupted flights. Their only fault is that they are trying to manage a difficult crisis without any real authority or help from their absentee employers and senior management. The DGCA is not bothered about them and the long hours they work for low wages behind the glamour of shiny uniforms and air-conditioned halls. Pilots, cabin crew, and corporate honchos have huge salaries and the prestige of high-flying careers to compensate for the stress involved in their daily routines. The ground staff have neither, and yet when things go wrong, they bear the brunt of the customers’ anger and abuse.

But not all Indian travellers are like this. I have travelled by train for much of my life. Indian trains, even today, are notorious for running late not just by hours but even by days. But when was the last time you saw media images of a crowd rushing into a station master’s cabin and roughing up railway clerks because a train is cancelled or delayed? Unlike the air traveller, the train passenger almost seems resigned to the delay.

The majority of train travellers are middle-class and other low-income people. Migrant labourers, rural people seeking treatment in city hospitals, youth searching for jobs in big towns—for them, even a delayed train is something to be grateful for. They have no time or energy to fight others in an unequal battle. But those who can afford flight tickets assume an element of entitlement because it places them in an elite list of just 3–4 per cent of 1.4 billion Indians who can afford air travel. In a country where flights are still a luxury for many, it is hardly surprising that this is one minority that takes its grievances seriously.

When it comes to mob justice, the victims are generally the exposed and the helpless. Thus, even the poor who wait patiently for trains that never arrive without challenging government authority or its representatives on the platform can mercilessly beat up errant drivers on the road or small-time thieves caught in the act. The owners and top executives of big industries and companies rarely face mob fury. It’s always the smallest entities, the lowest denominators, and the least paid on the ground who take the bullet for their masters.

I empathise with those who miss flights, important events, and spend uncomfortable nights in unfamiliar airports, having suffered similarly. But no amount of shouting or venting frustration magically produces missed flights or hotel stays because the person you are shouting at is as clueless as you are. In the end, there is not much difference between the street mobs and the educated high fliers, both of whom take recourse to bullying and haranguing their soft targets, the former to administer street justice and the latter to extract justice for itself. Mob justice on the streets may be a much larger and more problematic issue. But similar behaviour or near-similar behaviour inside airports should not be ignored or left unattended. It is time that those who threaten, bully, and abuse the ground staff of the airlines also face the full fury of the law. A ticket-buying public cannot give itself the right to attack employees who are carrying out their own duties inside such high-security areas as airports. Ground staff need to be respected for the job they are doing and not treated as easy targets to vent our ire on. Otherwise, we will forever be a nation of mobs both on the streets and inside.

I think it’s a good thing that the majority of this country is still travelling by train and has both the patience and the wisdom to accept that delayed trains do not mean the end of the road. Another one is always on the way to keep the nation on the move.

Views expressed are personal. The writer is a retired Civil Servant